11: THE BILL

  1. Michael J. Lostumbo et al., “Overseas Basing of U.S. Military Forces: An Assessment of Relative Costs and Strategic Benefits,” report, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, April 29, 2013, xxv.

  2. RAND Corporation, “U.S. Overseas Military Posture: Relative Costs and Strategic Benefits,” research brief, Santa Monica, CA, April 29, 2013.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Lostumbo et al., “Overseas Basing of U.S. Military Forces,” 280–82.

  5. See 10 U.S.C. 2634.

  6. Based on approximately 166,000 troops outside the fifty states as of March 31, 2014. U.S. Department of Defense, “Total Military Personnel and Dependent End Strength as of March 31, 2014,” Washington, DC, n.d. [2014].

  7. Mike Fitzgerald, “DOD, Where’s My Car? Transcom Searches for Missing Vehicles,” Belleville News-Democrat, August 16, 2014.

  8. 37 U.S.C. 406.

  9. Ibid.

10. Parts of this chapter stem from and are a revised version of my article “Picking Up a $170 Billion Tab: How U.S. Taxpayers Are Paying the Pentagon to Occupy the Planet,” TomDispatch, December 11, 2012, http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175627/. See also davidvine.net for a more detailed paper.

11. U.S. Department of Defense, “Operations and Maintenance Overview Fiscal Year 2014 Budget Estimates,” Washington, DC, April 2013, 204–7. The requirement appears in Section 8125 of the fiscal year 1989 Department of Defense Appropriations Act (P.L. 100–463). See also 10 U.S.C. 113.

12. Ibid., 205.

13. U.S. Office of Management and Budget, “The Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2013,” Washington, DC, 2012.

14. Anita Dancs and Miriam Pemberton, eds., “The Cost of the Global U.S. Military Presence,” Foreign Policy in Focus, July 2, 2009, http://fpif.org/the_cost_of_the_global_us_military_presence/.

15. R. Jeffrey Smith, “Pentagon’s Accounting Shambles May Cost an Additional $1 Billion,” Center for Public Integrity, October 13, 2011, updated March 23, 2012; Barbara Lee, “Audit the Pentagon,” Daily Kos blog, October 25, 2012, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/25/1150275/-Audit-the-Pentagon#.

16. Dave Gilson, “Don’t Tread on Me,” Mother Jones, January/February 2014, 31.

17. R. Jeffrey Smith, “Accounting Shambles.”

18. See Section 8125 of the fiscal year 1989 Department of Defense Appropriations Act (P.L. 100–463); 10 U.S.C. 113.

19. Turse, “Afghanistan’s Base Bonanza.”

20. U.S. Department of Defense, “Fiscal Year 2013 (FY) President’s Budget: Justification for Component Base Contingency Operations and the Overseas Contingency Operation Transfer Fund (OCOTF),” Washington, DC, March 2012.

21. The figures listed in each section will not always match the subtotals provided because of rounding. The table provided offers precise figures.

22. U.S. Census Bureau, “Puerto Rico and the Island Areas,” in Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2012 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2012), 815–22.

23. Spending figures for the territories are difficult to acquire. The best estimates available come from 2004. See Statemaster, “Guam: Military,” http://www.statemaster.com/red/state/GU-guam/mil-military&all=1; Governor of Guam, “One Guam Buildup,” Guam Realignment Annual Report, Hagåtña, Guam, 2012; Interagency Coordination Group of Inspectors General for Guam Realignment, “Annual Report 2013,” Washington, DC, February 1, 2013, 10–11; Bureau of Statistics and Plans, “Guam’s Facts and Figures at a Glance,” Office of the Governor, Hagåtña, Guam, 2011. Below, I subtract Japanese spending for the move to Guam.

24. Spending figures come from 2004 data available at www.statemaster.com. Spending for Puerto Rico is estimated at $1.175 billion. Spending for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and for Wake Island, for which I could not locate data, is estimated as equivalent to spending in American Samoa ($12 million), which has a similar military presence.

25. See Sandars, America’s Overseas Garrisons, 36; Justin Nobel, “A Micronesian Paradise—for U.S. Military Recruiters,” Time, December 31, 2009.

26. U.S. Department of Defense, “Financial Summary Tables, Department of Defense Budget for Fiscal Year 2013, FAD 792,” Washington, DC, February 2012, 2.

27. U.S. Department of Defense, “Operations and Maintenance Overview, Fiscal Year 2013,” 134–36. The total includes an additional $3 million in Navy funding for its Offshore Petroleum Discharge System and for exercises abroad (conservatively estimated as 17 percent of total exercise spending using the same percentage of total Navy and Marine Corps forces afloat and abroad).

28. Elizabeth Robbins email to author, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, December 6, 2012.

29. U.S. Department of Defense, “Financial Summary Tables, Fiscal Year 2013,” 5; U.S Office of Management and Budget, “Object Class Analysis: Budget of the U.S. Government Fiscal Year 2013,” Washington, DC, 2012, 3; U.S. Department of Defense, “Operations and Maintenance Overview, Fiscal Year 2013,” 136.

30. Department of Defense, “Financial Summary Tables, Fiscal Year 2013,” 10. The Pentagon comptroller prepares the Overseas Cost Summary, at the instruction of Congress, by compiling individual cost reports submitted by each of the armed forces. Thus, the summary appears to omit most “Defense-wide” spending.

32. Gillem, America Town, 88–89.

33. See “Financial Statements” in Army and Air Force Exchange Service, “Annual Report 2012,” n.p., 2013, 12; NEXCOM, “NEXCOM Annual Report 2012,” Virginia Beach, VA, n.d. [2012], 15. I was unable to locate a Marine Corps Exchange annual report or data on its annual subsidies. Therefore, I calculated the percentage of total sales that the AAFES subsidy represents (3.4 percent) to estimate the 2012 subsidy for the MCX on sales of $1,038.3 million. William C. Dillon, “Statement of William C. Dillon, Director, Semper Fit & Exchange Services Division, Manpower & Reserve Affairs, United States Marine Corps Before the Subcommittee on Military Personnel of the House Armed Services Committee on Military Resale,” Washington, DC, November 20, 2013, 6. All of these figures do not include subsidies and reimbursements for retail operations in Afghanistan and other war zones, which I assume are funded in war appropriations.

34. U.S. Department of Defense, “Operations and Maintenance Overview, Fiscal Year 2014,” 160.

35. Calder, Embattled Garrisons, 200.

36. Ibid., 201.

37. Ibid., 200–6.

38. Blaker, “Installations,” 107–9.

39. U.S. Department of State, “Executive Budget Summary: Function 150 and Other International Programs Fiscal Year 2014,” Washington, DC, April 10, 2013, 1–4.

40. U.S. Office of Management and Budget, “The Budget for Fiscal Year 2013,” Washington, DC, February 2012, 277, 324.

41. A RAND study calculated $2.3 billion in direct and in-kind contributions between Japan and South Korea in 2012 and $830 million from Germany in 2009. Lostumbo et al., “Overseas Basing of U.S. Military Forces,” 409–12.

42. U.S. Office of Management and Budget, “Budget for Fiscal Year 2013,” 304.

43. U.S. Department of Defense, “Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 Budget Estimates,” 732.

44. Army budget information states, “Support of Other Nations funds the Department’s contribution to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and directed missions to other nations.” U.S. Department of Defense, “Operations and Maintenance, Fiscal Year (FY) 2013,” 252, 274, 292.

45. Department of Defense, Financial Summary Tables, FAD-769, 6.

46. Andrew Feickert, “The Unified Command Plan and Combatant Commands: Background and Issues for Congress,” Congressional Research Service, report, Washington, DC, July 17, 2012, 12. Earlier versions of this calculation used slightly different assumptions that resulted in a higher estimate. I have revised the assumptions out of an abundance of caution because even the commands headquartered outside the United States spend some of their money domestically.

47. Ibid., 12.

48. In addition to the Combatant Commands’ budgets, this conservatively includes half of the $764,755,000 in the Combatant Commander’s Exercise Engagement and Training Transformation program. U.S. Department of Defense, “Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 Budget Estimates,” 704–7, 733.

49. Robbins email to author.

50. U.S. Department of Defense, “Operations and Maintenance, Fiscal Year (FY) 2014,” 69–72.

51. See Defense Environmental International Cooperation program. U.S. Department of Defense, “Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 Budget Estimates,” 731; “Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 Budget Estimates, Justification for FY 2013, Operation and Maintenance, Defense-Wide,” vol. 2, Washington, DC, February 2012, 224, 229, 236, 237.

52. U.S. Department of Defense Threat Reduction Agency, “Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 Budget Estimates; Cooperative Threat Reduction Program,” Washington, DC, February 2012, 75–76, 84.

53. Robert Beckhusen and Noah Shachtman, “See for Yourself: The Pentagon’s $51 Billion ‘Black’ Budget,” Wired, February 15, 2012, http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/02/pentagons-black-budget/.

54. Department of Defense, “2013 DOD Black Budget,” https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Anb82yNPJZc0dDVadWM1c0xTZXlfVjRGZUlRQ3pja0E#gid=3.

55. Federation of American Scientists, “Intelligence Budget Data,” www.fas.org, 2014, http://www.fas.org/irp/budget/index.html.

56. Tom Engelhardt and Nick Turse, “The Shadow War Making Sense of the New CIA Battlefield in Afghanistan,” TomDispatch, January 10, 2010, http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175188/tomgram:_engelhardt_and_turse,_the_cia_surges/.

57. Ben Armbruster, “Republicans Reveal Location of Secret CIA Base During House Hearing on Libya Attacks,” ThinkProgress, October 11, 2012, http://thinkprogress.org/security/2012/10/11/991231/republicans-reveal-cia-base-libya/; Jeremy Scahill, “The CIA’s Secret Sites in Somalia,” Nation, July 12, 2011; Mark Mazzetti, “C.I.A. Building Base for Strikes in Yemen,” New York Times, June 14, 2011.

58. Barton Gellman and Greg Miller, “U.S. Spy Network’s Successes, Failures and Objectives Detailed in ‘Black Budget’ Summary,” Washington Post, August 26, 2013; Washington Post, “The Black Budget,” August 29, 2013, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/national/black-budget/. This may be an underestimate: GlobalSecurity.com director John Pike told me that covert operations may account for as much as a third of the CIA’s total budget currently. Fiscal year 2012 CIA spending was about $1 billion higher than for 2013, so using the later figures should again, if anything, be an underestimate, especially given the declining use of drone strikes.

59. The OCS says it accounts for “all” the costs of supporting the children of military personnel and civilian employees. My repeated inquiries to the Pentagon went unanswered. The more than $1.3 billion includes $1.24 billion for DoDDS schools in fiscal year 2012. The Department of Defense Educational Activity considers schools in Guam and Puerto Rico to be domestic schools, so there would be additional costs from the Department of Defense Domestic Dependent Elementary and Secondary Schools’ $504.7 million budget as well as funding for schooling at non-DOD schools in Canada, Mexico, and the Americas. See U.S. Department of Defense Educational Activity, “Budget Book Fiscal Year 2012,” Washington, DC, n.d. [2011].

60. See Amy Belasco, “The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11,” Congressional Research Service report, Washington, DC, March 29, 2011, 17, 33–34.

61. U.S. Department of Defense, “United States Department of Defense Fiscal Year 2015 Budget Amendment: Overview Overseas Contingency Operations,” Washington, DC, June 2014, 6.

62. Neta C. Crawford, “U.S. Costs of Wars Through 2013: $3.1 Trillion and Counting: Summary of Costs for the U.S. Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Costs of War project, March 13, 2013, http://www.usf-iraq.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Us_Costs_of_Wars.pdf. I reached my figure by summing Crawford’s costs beyond direct war funding for fiscal years 2001–2013 and dividing that figure by thirteen to approximate the funding for a single year.

63. Office of the Secretary of Defense (Personnel and Readiness) budget, Department of Defense, Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 Budget Estimates, 733.

64. The almost $2 billion in “rental” costs is based on around $11 billion in total aid found in State Department war appropriations less USAID funding (Department of State, Congressional Budget Justification: Foreign Assistance Summary Tables Fiscal Year 2013 [Washington, DC, February 2012], 6–7). See also U.S. Department of Defense, “United States Department of Defense Fiscal Year 2015 Budget Amendment: Overview Overseas Contingency Operations,” Washington, DC, June 2014, 6.

65. U.S. Department of Defense, “United States Department of Defense Fiscal Year (FY) 2015 Budget Request: Overview Overseas Contingency Operations Budget Amendment,” Washington, DC, November 2014, 3.

66. U.S. Office of Management and Budget “The Budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2015,” Washington, DC, 2014, 203.

67. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, “Build Bases in America,” Politico, July 13, 2010, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/39625.html.

68. Robert Pollin and Heidi Garrett-Peltier, “The U.S. Employment Effects of Military and Domestic Spending Priorities: 2011 Update,” report, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, December 2011, 1–3.

69. James Heintz, “Military Assets and Public Investment,” manuscript, CostsofWar.org, February 2, 2011.

70. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “The Chance for Peace,” speech, Washington, DC, April 16, 1953.

71. National Priorities Project, “Cost of War: Taxpayers in the US and Department of Defense in FY2014,” http://nationalpriorities.org/tradeoffs/041713/.

72. Gillem, America Town.